So I promised you about a week and a half ago that I would get back to you on that batch of fresh dill pickles, to tell you how they turned out.

Well, right about the time they were ready four days later, I came down with a nasty chest cold, and ever since then, my sense of taste has been nearly entirely gone. They turned out pretty tasty, my husband said, save for one thing: I hadn’t thoroughly dissolved the salt in the water, it turns out, so the top pickles were not very salty, and the bottom ones were too salty. I took the too-salty ones and put them in a jar with plain water, and the next day, they were just right. So, lesson learned: that salt don’t mix itself.

Anyway, as I also mentioned last time, the leftover brine from a jar of pickles can be used again, and this time, I took that brine (after mixing it well!) and filled it with lightly cooked beets, sliced onions, and black peppercorns. I refrigerated them for four days.

So here they are, and they turned out pretty tasty, so far as my stuffy self can tell, and my husband likes them. They’re just the right saltiness and tenderness, and what a pretty color too!

He does suggest that I don’t use dill for the next batch of beet pickles, because he thinks that the dill taste predominates too much over the beet taste. I’ll have to take his word for it for now!